Walnut Tree Cottage

Walnut Tree Cottage is a detached house built in the mid-17th century in Cotswold vernacular style. The building is constructed from coursed limestone rubble with limestone quoins and dressings, beneath a Cotswold stone slate roof.

The cottage is roughly rectangular on plan, comprising a main two-storey range of single depth with two rooms, each featuring a gable end fireplace, one containing a winder stair. A single-storey kitchen extension projects slightly forward from the front elevation.

The house presents three bays and two storeys with a steeply pitched roof and gable end stacks. Large dressed limestone quoins mark the corners of the main range. The south (garden) elevation features two- and three-light chamfered stone mullioned windows with hood moulds set to the ground and first floors, a later small fixed light to the stairway, and two rooflights. The north (main) elevation displays a small projecting porch at ground floor level flanked by window openings, and the lean-to kitchen wing with a pent roof and ball finial. The first floor has three windows set under the eaves, finished as pegged timber casements of the early 19th century.

Internally, the ground floor contains two rooms retaining their chamfered and stopped ceiling beams with fireplaces featuring bressumer beams. The eastern room has a terracotta tiled floor; the western room features large flagstones. A 17th-century winder stair with solid oak treads stands beside the west fireplace within the gable end wall, continuing to the attic. The first floor retains three transverse chamfered and stopped ceiling beams. Two-panel doors of the 18th century survive, alongside some early 19th-century plank and batten doors. The western room contains a fireplace with part of a late 18th or early 19th-century fire surround and contemporary fitted cupboard. The eastern room has an inserted winder stair, probably 19th-century, providing attic access. The roof structure comprises pegged trusses with tie beams, paired principal rafters, twin purlins and high collars, with some later strengthening and replacement at the western end.

The cottage originated as a house, possibly associated with the nearby farm to the north, and formed part of a small group including Honeysuckle Cottage immediately to the north and 1 and 2 Fyfield Cottages, all dating from the 17th century. Cosmetic alterations in the 18th century included new doors and doorcases. A second winder stair was inserted between first and attic floors at the east end, perhaps in the early 19th century, possibly indicating multiple occupancy at that time. The 1843 tithe map shows both Walnut Tree and Honeysuckle Cottages with the farmstead to their north. By the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1882, the current kitchen extension, porch, and two small lean-to sections to the west had been added. The 20th century saw the removal of these small additions to the west.